Cloudy Banana Wine

I'm in the process of making a banana wine. I had it in the secondary for about a month then racked it into another carboy leaving behind a decent amount of lees. It's been nearly another month and it's still very cloudy and no lees have been accumulating. I did use pectic enzyme 24 hrs prior to the primary. Does anybody have any thoughts on using an additional clarifier to help move it along? I've got some bentonite and gelatin. I know I should probably just be patient, but will adding either of those at this stage jeopardize the outcome of it?

It's been a bit since i made some, but if I recall correctly it seemed the banana wine did take a while to clear and then suddenly it just seemed to drop clear.

If you followed the recipe then I can only suggest more patience. That stuff is pretty harsh for a year or two so it's not like you are going to miss drinking it right away!

My banana wine took about 2 months to clear. What recipe did you follow?

I followed this one for mine:
http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f2/banana-wine-recipe-2-a-3629/

Mine took a really long time to clear, as well....but all it required, in the end, was patience. Well worth it!

Here's how it turned out.

I had a 6-pack left from a batch I made about 2 years ago. I chilled one a few days back and tasted it with the wife. I'm not a big wine fan, but it was enjoyable enough for a wine, and certainly better IMO than most of the fruit wines I have sampled. My wife said it would probably be good for someone who liked real wines. She is a fan of sweeter wines, and most drawn to some with carbonation.

The bottles cleared up nicely like TedLarsen's photo, but I bottled in beer bottles, some of them clear.

This reminds me that I need to hand these out to a few fans of "Real Wine" to see if it's a recipe I want to continue to make. It's good enough for me, but I do prefer beer. But I'll make it for others if they like it. It's so easy and is a fun kind of novelty.

I personally really like to use Isinglass. I usually mix it in at the same time that I throw in the sorbate. Some people like it, some people don't. It usually only takes about 2 weeks to settle.

what was your fermentation temperature with this wine?

TedLarsen said:

Mine took a really long time to clear, as well....but all it required, in the end, was patience. Well worth it! Here's how it turned out.

Click to expand...

It's starting to drop slowly. Hopefully it'll turn out as nice looking as those!

Honda88 said:

what was your fermentation temperature with this wine?

Click to expand...

The fermentation temp was around 68-70